Paris Apartment Vacated, and Some Want a Ministry to Follow

By ELAINE SCIOLINO; Ariane Bernard contributed reporting for this article.

Published: February 25, 2005

Bending the truth is rarely a mortal sin in French political life. But Finance Minister Herv?aymard may have gone too far.

First, Mr. Gaymard, 45, portrayed himself as shocked, shocked to learn last week that the 6,500-square-foot luxury duplex apartment he recently moved into with his wife and eight children was costing the state $18,470 a month in rent, according to the muckraking weekly Le Canard Encha?. (That doesn't count an additional $3,300 a month for maintenance and three parking spaces, $42,000 to renovate the apartment and the parking area and $16,000 for real estate fees.)

Then, Mr. Gaymard moaned that he was a victim of his humble origins.

''I have always lived humbly; I do not have money,'' he said in an interview in the weekly magazine Paris-Match that hit the newsstands on Thursday. ''Obviously, if I weren't the son of a shoe repairman-shoe salesman but of a rich bourgeois, I wouldn't have a housing problem. I would own my own apartment, and this thing wouldn't have happened.''

The only problem with that argument is that Mr. Gaymard does own an apartment, a 2,150-square-foot, four-bedroom unit on Boulevard St. Michel in the heart of the Latin Quarter that he rents out for $3,000 a month.

The scandal has thrown red meat to the Socialist opposition and prompted cries for the resignation of Mr. Gaymard, the champion of public spending cuts.

It occurs as France is suffering from a public deficit that violates European Union rules, 10 percent unemployment and high public distrust of the political system.

The scandal also cuts down one of France's power couples. Mr. Gaymard's wife, Clara, 45, is the country's ambassador at large to attract foreign investment to France. The finance minister is so close to President Jacques Chirac that his name has even been mentioned as a long shot for prime minister if Jean-Pierre Raffarin is replaced.

''This is no longer a real estate affair; it is a crisis of confidence,'' Le Monde said in a stunningly strong editorial on Thursday. Blaming Mr. Gaymard for ''political blindness and the lack of a sense of propriety,'' the editorial added, ''There is now only one way in a responsible democracy: resignation.''

The left-leaning daily Lib?tion predicted a crisis of confidence in the center-right government if he stays. ''The best for the image of politics would be if he resigned,'' it said in an editorial on Thursday. Otherwise, there is a risk of ''seeing the discredited voice of Gaymard contaminate the entire government.''

The Socialist leadership was also swift to attack what is being dubbed ''the Gaymard affair.''

''This is a serious matter because he broke the rules,'' S?l? Royal, the most popular female politician in France and a Socialist deputy in Parliament, said in a telephone interview. ''There is another serious factor: he lied.''

So far, Mr. Chirac and Mr. Raffarin have said nothing either to support or to criticize Mr. Gaymard, although officials in Mr. Raffarin's office insist in private that his resignation is ''not on the agenda.''

They left it to lower-level officials to defend him. Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin, who writes poetry and tomes on Napoleon in his spare time and has never been at a loss for words, called it a moment for soul-searching.

''No one is saying we should act as if nothing has happened,'' Mr. de Villepin said in an interview on France-Inter radio on Thursday. ''It's a matter of drawing the right conclusions and doing better.''

Christian Jacob, the minister of commerce and small business, called for a bit of perspective. ''Enough of the stone-throwing,'' he told the popular newspaper Le Parisien, adding, ''Let's not forget there have been far more serious cases in the history of the republic, and at the time, we did far less.''

The minister did not say what those more serious cases were. But under the rubric of real estate scandals, there was the case of the late Socialist president, Fran?s Mitterrand, who kept his mistress and their daughter in an annex of ?ys?Palace. There was also the case of Alain Jupp?a former prime minister who had been regarded as Mr. Chirac's designated heir, and his family, who that same year had to move out of city-owned, rent-controlled apartments that they rented at submarket prices.

Certainly there have been larger political scandals. Supporters of Mr. Chirac last month floated the idea of making former presidents senators for life in an effort to shield him from corruption investigations that have swirled around him for years.

Once Mr. Chirac is out of office, he can be formally investigated and even prosecuted for corruption in the Paris region during his years as mayor.

Mr. Jupp?as given a suspended sentence and banned from politics for a year after he was convicted last year of misusing public funds in the Paris city hall.

The Socialists have been steeped in scandal as well. The trial of those said to have headed a government antiterrorist cell that illegally wiretapped journalists and other people in private life during the early part of Mr. Mitterrand's presidency in the 1980's just finished on Wednesday, with the verdict expected in April.

But it is the Gaymard scandal that dominates the front pages these days.

Mr. Gaymard and his family have moved out of the apartment they moved into only early this month. He told Paris-Match he was ''camping out'' in a studio apartment in the Ministry of Finance building; the children are now spending the February school vacation at the family farm in Savoy.

Under rules established by Mr. Raffarin, one of two apartments in the Ministry of Finance (one is 3,400-square-feet, the other 3,300) would have been big enough for Mr. and Mrs. Gaymard, even with their eight children.

Mr. Gaymard said in a statement on Wednesday that he would pay back to the state all expenses incurred by the rental of his apartment, including the renovation costs and fees linked to the early termination of the lease.

In an interview with Le Figaro published Thursday, he called himself '''as clean as a newly minted penny,'' and vowed that he would not resign.

If the scandal continues to play out in the news media and the Chirac government is further tarnished, not only the Socialists stand to gain politically.

Another potential winner is Nicolas Sarkozy, a political foe of Mr. Chirac who left the job now held by Mr. Gaymard in November to take the leadership of their party and prepare himself for a bid for the presidency in 2007.

''I'm sure the people of France are wondering about this,'' Mr. Sarkozy said during a visit to Tarbes in the French Pyrenees on Thursday. ''In view of their own everyday problems, the French may be asking themselves questions and pass a rather harsh judgment on what's going on.''

A cartoon on the front page of Thursday's Le Monde shows Mr. Gaymard, harried and sweating, reading the want ads and asking on a portable phone, ''Looking for a quiet studio, if possible without leaks.''